AUTHOR=Mapuranga Martha , Maunganidze Farai , Ruggunan Shaun 

TITLE=Get vaccinated or else…employees’ perspective on mandatory vaccination in the retail sector in Zimbabwe

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.946454

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2022.946454

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=The emergence of COVID-19 has resulted in many changes in the world of work. Measures such as remote working, physical distancing, compulsory use of face masks, sanitasation among others. With time, a number of medical interventions to deal with the pandemic were developed and availed. Zimbabwe’s retail sector was not spared of different vaccines which were meant to curb the virus. Most Zimbabwean organisations made it mandatory for their employees to get vaccinated or risked losing employment. However, less is known about the perceptions of employees towards voluntary vaccination. This gap is especially concerning given the strategic nature of employees in an organisation. This paper poses the following questions (1) to what extent were employees consulted on the compulsory vaccination? (2) What are the employees’ perceptions towards compulsory vaccination? (3) How are employees coping with the mandatory vaccination? In addressing these questions, the paper uses phenomenological approach to empirically ground its arguments. Twenty shopfloor employees from two major retail outlets were purposively sampled and interviewed.  The paper argues that employees have a right to bee involved in issues that concern them. The study has established that employees were not consulted and most of them did not subscribe to mandatory vaccination. Furthermore, it has come to the fore that employees are generally not passive recipients of policies, they usually have their own ways of settling their grievances, especially if they feel they were not consulted on issues that pertains them.